


desert ghosts

by river_soul



Category: Doom (2005)
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 01:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/river_soul/pseuds/river_soul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam can feel his hand, heavy against her hip, like a promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	desert ghosts

Earth is not home. 

The sun is bright and Sam can feel her skin burning, shrinking in the heat. It’s oppressive, all encompassing, but John turns tan under the Earth sun like their mother. He likes the solidness of the ground beneath his feet, the smell of the ozone. Everything is green and alive here but Sam feels vulnerable and open.

There is too much space.

-

John holds her hand, palm soft and small like her own, at the funeral. They stand solitary, away from the closed caskets and friends of their parents. They need no one. They are alone and John understands this. He will be the one to protect Sam from her nightmares, like their father once did. He will be strong for her; he will remember this pain, this sharp anger in his chest.

-

Months have come and gone and Sam can no longer remember the faces of her parents. She dreams of their death and wakes with the smell of dust clogging her throat in the silence of her room on Earth. John isn’t far away, a shadow across her door before she can work up the courage to call for him. He looks small in the dark, young like her but when he settles behind her she can feel his bulk, the way she ages him.

“I miss them,” she says, too quiet for him to hear and lies awake with his smell, so much like their father, around her. His even breaths fall across her cheek. Sam can feel his hand, heavy against her hip, like a promise.

-

John’s hand around her wrist is painful. His face is lean and hungry, not like she remembers from Oblivida. The boy at his feet, the one that cornered her after school, howls in pain; face a bloody mess. Her throat feels tight, scratchy, and Sam sees the bright streak of red across John’s knuckles, feels its sticky warmth on her skin.

When she looks up at him, his eyes slide away from her, focus on something over her shoulder. She touches his cheek, hand cool against the warm flesh and his eyes close. He looks pained. “John,” she says, the gentle movement of her fingers against his skin trying to calm his rapid breathing.

“Look at me,” she tells him and when he opens his eyes again they’re bright and clear.

-

“I hate you,” she tells him, and means it when he stands before her in that uniform and she can see his future, crumpled at her feet. He doesn’t flinch at her words and she feels betrayed, alone, when she realizes how far they’ve grown apart.

“John,” she tries, voice caught in her throat as she thinks about her parents, about this longing inside to return to Oblivida.

He turns away from her and the words she wants to say to draw him back to her don’t come. She watches him leave, heart heavy, praying he’ll turn around to her.

He doesn’t look back.

-

They accept her without an application and its old men and old money that fund her study. It isn’t hard to find others willing to follow in her wake. She stops writing to John, stops thinking about him all together when she finds her way back to Oblivida. She learns to avoid the old halls; learns which ones are full of too many memories, too much pain.

She copes and she learns. Makes do with out him.

-

It starts small. Wild, bloody dreams and a small tremor of fear in her hands when she wakes. It passes by lunchtime and when dinner comes she’s almost forgotten that feeling until the alarms starts. It’s deafening and people are up in a heartbeat, running to their stations. Sam follows, worries her bottom lip between her teeth. She has a job to do, her data pad is already beeping, instructions and directions for her and her team that gather around her anxiously.

She smiles for them, calm and assured even as she feels something awful gathering, waiting in the future. For the first time in months she thinks of John.

-

Her world is crashing down around her, smoke and ash, failed dreams and a repeated past. She feels like she’s drowning in all the blood but John is there, strong and sure, hand in her own like when they were small. “It’s going to be ok,” he tells her and she believes him, flexes her fingers against his, and remembers this feeling.

-

“You can’t die on me now,” she chokes out, “I won’t let you.” She touches his forehead, sticky with blood and sweat, to smooth back his hair before she picks up the needle at her side. It’s a strange mix of desperate desire and rising hope that guides her hand to his arm. It isn’t hard to find a vein and she eases away the hand that moves to stop her. She squeezes his fingers and listens to the wet, desperate draws for breath he makes.

His eyes are heavy with worry when he presses the gun into her hand. The self-loathing and uncertainty she sees in his eyes guts her and she lurches forward unsteadily on the floor wet with his blood to press her lips to his. “I know you,” she whispers against his mouth, “I know you and I love you.”

“Sam,” he gasps. Her name sounds harsh against his lips as she feels him shift under her, hand curling around the back of her neck. The pressure is almost painful and when she leans forward it eases a little. “Love you,” he grits out, mouth moving up towards hers, hand holding her in place. He tastes bitter, like old blood and doubt tinged with desperation. When she feels his tongue against the seam of her lips she opens her mouth to him, just as frantic.

She knows this is wrong, knows all the reasons that she should pull away but he’s bleeding, dying underneath her and it seems so unfair to have gotten him back just to have him vanish again. She pulls him tightly toward her, hand curling awkwardly over the bulk of his tactical uniform and doesn’t breathe again until he slips out of her grasp, unconscious but alive.

-

When it's all over John holds her against his chest, mouth pressed against her brow and whispers _almost home_ , and for the first time in years, his heart beating slow and steady under her, Sam believes him.


End file.
